CHAPTER L
REVELATION
"You!" she said. "You—you!"
"Yes."
With her eyes upon him she moved away with uncertain, backward steps. When she spoke again it was with a quick breath that was like a sob, and in a voice scarcely audible, with breaks between the words: "It is—it was?—you—"
"It was I."
"You!"
"Yes."
"All—the time?"
"All the time."
There was a silence. She had begun to tremble from head to foot. Her face was turned away and her hands were shaking; she clenched them tight. Her voice fell lower, till it was the merest whisper:
"You were the—the convict—the man—in Craig's library?"
He came nearer. "Yes," he said.
She put one hand to her throat. "I—don't care to understand—now. I—I'm only trying—to realise—" She paused. The doming tinder in the fire-place broke and fell, and for a last instant a yellow-ochre burst of flame threw a bright golden veil about them. Two great tears rolled down her cheeks. "Then you," she whispered, "then you know why I went there. You could not believe that I—that I—"
"My darling!" His arms were around her now, crushing her to him with tender fierceness, till she could feel his heart thudding against her breast, and the blossom crushed there held for him the scent of all the roses of all the world. He bent his head and their lips clung into a kiss. "Never—never—that!" he murmured, with his lips against her cheek, "though I must be forgiven very much. I was blind. I thought you knew—knew that it was really I there in the prison, knew and were willing that it should be! And all the while..."
"And I," she whispered, "I thought you had gone away, and didn't care—any more. And all along—all along..."
When they drew a little apart so that each might better see the other's face, the wonder and miracle had touched them both with a kind of awe. She looked at him with lips that were still trembling under the startled glory in her eyes. "The day after that—that night—I went to your office, saw my broken picture—and—the bottle. I guessed—I guessed—"
"It was true," he said. "I threw away my promise to you. I would have thrown myself away with it! But it was not to be, sweetheart! I have come back to you, dearest—dearest of all the world!"
So they stood, haloed in the lamp-light, clinging together, swayed and shaken, love and youth and dream melted into one golden eternity, pouring forth tender, sweet confessions in broken words and silences, oblivious to the passage of time, to the clamour that had begun to rise from the rooms across the hall—to a sound that came over the tree-tops of the avenue, blazing now with fireworks, the sound of jubilance and marching feet, drawing nearer and nearer.
At midnight the great porch of Midfields was hung gay with lanterns and bunting and Harry stood watching the rear-guard of torch-bearers stream down the drive. The battalions had gathered like magic when the blowing of whistles announced that the returns from the crucial counties spelled victory beyond peradventure. They had swung down the main street, a band at their head, a shouting, jostling army, to acclaim the Governor-Elect.
With his friends of the long fight—Judge Allen, Brent and a score of others—about him, he had spoken to them, a short speech full of feeling. They, not he, had won the fight, he told them. And the victory was an earnest of the future. But the race was not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong; the forces they had that day vanquished would return to the struggle, and they must be beaten again and again till the State, and every home within its borders, was free forever. Now the cheering was over and the throngs had trooped away after the band, to parade the denser streets of the business section, while the Committee lingered for an exultant aftermath in the dismantled east room.
As Governor Eveland stood with the Judge on the porch, looking out over the trampled lawn, Treadwell came up the drive.
"I thought," he said, "that you would like to know about Craig. He is as he was before they took him abroad for the operation. It is unlikely that there will ever be any change again, they think."
They heard him in silence, but across the mind of the older man was flashing a stern epitaph—"He hath digged a pit for his neighbour, and hath fallen into the midst of it himself." Presently he sighed—his thought had shifted to the unknown man he had pardoned that night.
"It has been a singular evening," he said. "I am sorry Sevier was not here earlier—when our convict came. Strange that even you, Treadwell, should not have seen his face! I wonder," he added musingly, "if we shall ever know who he was!"
The Judge shook his head—the same wonder was in his mind. Treadwell's face was inscrutable. The Governor's gaze strayed up the long porch where at the further end a girl stood with the Governor-Elect in the rosy glow of the lanterns. He laid his gaunt hand affectionately on the Judge's shoulder.
"Brave and true!" he said. "When I think of what she told us tonight, Beverly, I have no words!"
Treadwell broke the silence. He spoke with a little flush mounting in his face, "I hope I need not say that I—that what we have heard to-night—"
But the Judge stopped him. "My dear Treadwell!" he said, in gentle reproof. "My dear Treadwell! We are all gentlemen!"
The Governor-Elect and the girl who stood beside him lingered a little longer in the shadow of the crimson rambler. Down the avenue beyond the great gate, the flambeaux clustered and faded and diminished, the band music had throbbed to silence and about them was only the silver, dew-silent night. They stood in silence. The old house behind them was full of jovial voices and laughter, and every window was glowing with lights, but where they stood was quiet and peace.
At length he took both her hands and laid them together, beneath his own, upon his breast.
"'Hours fly, flowers die'" (he quoted),
"'New men, new ways,
Pass by;
Love stays.'"
He lifted the hands he held to his lips. "Do you know the one thing that has come to me out of it all?"
"Yes," she murmured, "I know."
"It came to me in the night, last night. Up to then it had seemed fate's whipper-in that was driving me. But then, when I saw the gulf opening at my feet, and saw no way out, and ceased to struggle, I knew all at once that fate is only an empty name; that it was—God."
He felt her fingers quiver in his clasp.
"There was an Eye that watched and a Hand that overruled," he said slowly. "Even the evil and the hatred—the temptation, the sin and the pain—the penalty—It overruled them all. Drink made the man who shot Craig a criminal—yet but for that burglary you might now be Craig's wife! Drink sent me to Craig's house that night—yet but for that journey I could not have saved you. Drink closed the prison door on me, but only there—I know it now!—could I have mastered it! And if I have won in this campaign and if I sit—with you, my darling!—in the Mansion on the Hill, it is because of what I learned within those walls—the knowledge of what drink has done to men!"
He released her hands and looked up into the heavens.
"It shall vanish from this state," he said. "And it shall vanish from this Union! I am as sure of it as if the sign of its passing were written there in the sky!"
She caught his arm. "See!" she said.
Far away, city-ward, over the trees, against the deep, dark vault, the dazzling, many-pointed blaze of a rocket paled and sank into the darkness.
BOOKS BY
HALLIE ERMINIE RIVES
(Mrs. Post Wheeler)
The Long Lane's Turning
The Valiants of Virginia
The Kingdom of Slender Swords
Satan Sanderson
The Castaway
Hearts Courageous
A Furnace of Earth
Tales From Dickens